Birds

The statistics for Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are almost as stunning as a close-up look at their iridescent plumage.

Zeroing in on the male hummingbird

Their wings can flap up to 80 times a second. They weigh about 3 grams – a wisp of a bird at a tenth of an ounce. They can go from breakneck speed to a full stop in an instant.

And when they do hang suspended in midair, their wings a blur of motion, the sight is one of nature’s most precious moments. It evaporates as suddenly as it appears, making the encounters all the more intriguing.

The Ruby-throated is one of 300 hummingbird species worldwide, only a few dozen of which are in the U.S. and Canada. The Ruby-throated Hummingbird is the single species found in the Eastern United States, but it’s plentiful and not particularly shy. So these spectacular hummingbirds are not hard to spot, particularly this time of year.

In late summer, as the hummingbirds are preparing to migrate halfway across the hemisphere, they are in the midst of a feeding frenzy to bulk up for the journey. They consume their entire weight in nectar each day, which the Audubon Society calculated was the equivalent of a human drinking 18 gallons of milk.

When we post photos on Facebook, as we try to do every couple of days, we learn all kinds of things from the thousands of readers following our Flying Lessons page. Some tell birding stories. Others share photos. Together, they let us know which species they like best.

Raptors are the most popular. A close second are the chicks and fledglings that are steadily more visible this time of year.

Here’s the Carolina Wren posted on Facebook that prompted an outpouring of comments and photos

Our followers are fascinated by exotic birds, like the Roseate Spoonbill and the Magnificent Frigatebird. And yet, in something of a surprise, the greatest outpouring of comments often come with the most common bird photos, from Bluebirds to Cardinals, Sparrows to Chickadees.

The other day, we shared a shot of a Carolina Wren, hanging upside-down as they often do. These shy but abundant birds can be found in much of the country every summer, at feeders, in the woods and along trails. And clearly, they are a favorite, like old friends bringing fond memories.

Within an hour, our Flying Lessons Facebook page was peppered with comments about how readers love these Wrens, with their long, curved beaks and tireless singing.

“This beautiful bird has the loudest voice,’’ said Jo Dewar. “Fun to hear and watch,’’ said Rea Pitsnogle. Wrote Elizabeth Strickland: “Love watching Wrens get food for their babies and themselves.’’

By the end of the day, the page had collected a string of stories about delightful and unusual Wren encounters.

Early one morning on a bird walk in Cape May, N.J., our guide was excited to show us something exquisite: A tiny and all but hidden nest of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird sitting on a nest woven into a tree branch

We walked in utter silence, single file, through a swamp lined with trees and brambles. Then he came to a stop and set up a telescope. The nest was on a thin branch 20 feet overhead. Still, it took a while to spot the hummingbird – weighing about an ounce – sitting on a nest the size of a quarter, barely visible through the leaves.

The arrival of a new generation is taking place this summer almost entirely hidden from view.

Most birds don’t sing nearly as much as they go about their work of building nests, producing eggs and raising their young. They hide for obvious reasons: To protect their hatchlings from hazards, predators and the elements during their first fragile weeks.

And yet with a little luck — and the occasional guide who knows just where to look — we can catch a glimpse of this annual miracle. Here are some photos from our travels so far this nesting season:

Two Cedar Waxwings materialized above the wildlife park in Northern Virginia and pirouetted into an aerial ballet. They rose and fell, circled high above the lake, then swooped down close to the ground. They pulled all this off in precise formation like two tiny jets on military maneuvers.

And then the real show began. They landed side by side on a branch at the edge of the lake and began an exchange recognizable no matter whether the species is winged, four-footed or two.

The mating dance was on.

The Cedar Waxwing is an elegant bird. It has a black mask, slicked back head feathers, a brilliant touch of red at the wingtips and a yellow bar on its tail. A junta general couldn’t come up with more dazzling regalia.

They are full of energy, captivating and fascinating, says Robert Rice, a veteran scientist with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, who wrote the center’s summary on Cedar Waxwings.

These stylish birds are also gluttons. They can strip a tree of fruit so quickly they become temporarily too weighty to fly. “They can eat so much fruit it ferments in their gut and they go wobbly for a while,” said Rice.

Cedar Waxwings often travel in small groups, and will sweep through a set of trees and scarf up every ripe berry like locusts.

But the other day at Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, Va., these two stayed mostly to themselves. They seemed transfixed when they landed on a branch and began their dance.

In our early days on the trail, it took a while to realize that birding has its own, largely un-communicated set of dos and don’ts.

I’ll never forget the morning we pulled into a nature preserve parking lot alongside a group of folks wearing khaki vests and putting away cannon-sized cameras wrapped in camouflage coating.

We were excited to find characters who looked so much the part. These had to be “real” birders, and we had a lot of questions. We got out of the car, grinning and waving. They practically jumped into theirs as if we were planning to attack.

In the early days, some birders ran when they saw me coming with my pink hat and pulled up socks.

Could it have been my trusty pink cap? The white tube socks pulled over my cuffs to avoid getting bitten by a tick? In the birding world, we were as obvious a cliché wearing our beginner garb as they were in identical bird-nerd outfits.

It turns out there are good reasons for the birding nerdyness.

“Birds are very sensitive to colors and often view them as a threat,” said Dale Rosselet, the vice president for education at New Jersey Audubon. “So you don’t want people moving through the forest with hot pink on. Wear muted colors, and try to blend in with the surroundings. If you’re walking through a forest, white stands out like a sore thumb.”

Oops.

Wardrobe fundamentals was just one lesson I learned from Rosselet during a walk with 20 other birders of varying skill levels at the Cape May Birding Festival last month. At one point she trained her telescope on a distant gull and turned to face the group.

“Here’s how we’re going to do this,” Rosselet said. “Each person takes a quick look through the scope, and after everyone has a chance, you can come back and look again.”

Taking turns may be kindergarten basics, but after leading hundreds of field trips and tours, Rosselet has seen many a person forget their manners in the presence of a beautiful bird.

“People get excited. They’re going to rush in, they’re going to squeal – we’ve all done it,” she said. “The main thing is to try and remember you’re in a group, and everyone is trying to see.”

In a recent interview, I asked Rosselet for more advice on how to bird well with others. For starters, go on an organized walk with a trained leader.

When I was in the fifth grade in my little hometown in Pennsylvania, the school put on dancing lessons. At the start of each session, the boys and girls would line up on either side of the auditorium and then race toward each other in a chaotic rush to find partners for that day.

I’m reminded of that frantic and frightening pairing as the spring migration comes to a close across the U.S. and billions of birds are searching for mates. Instead of a few weeks of dancing lessons, they will commit to building homes, starting families and raising their young.

A pair of Great Blue Herons meet up in Viera, Florida.

It’s no wonder that the woods, fields and marshes are filled with birds howling at the top of their lungs. They have a lot riding on a song.

A few species, including Bald Eagles, Atlantic Puffins, Black Vultures and Blue Jays, mate for life. But most of North America’s 1,000 or so species have to find new mates every spring.

As photos of migrating birds popped up on a big screen last night, a couple dozen birders from the Audubon Society of Northern Virginia sat in a conference room at the National Wildlife Federation headquarters taking careful notes. Saturday is World Migratory Bird Day, and these folks were getting their marching orders.

Starting at dawn they’ll form teams and scour nearby “Important Bird Areas,” counting species to help evaluate how this year’s migrating birds have fared on the flight across thousands of miles to their breeding grounds. Here are some of what they’re likely to see in a gallery of photos Anders has taken from our recent migration trip (run your cursor over the pictures for their species).

Blue Grosbeak

Baltimore Oriole

Cape May Warbler

Scarlet Tanager

Eastern Meadowlark

Male Orchard Oriole

Female Orchard Oriole

Blackburnian Warbler

Bird counts are mostly for the hardcore. But if you’re at all interested in birds, if you’re tuning into this spring’s tweet-and-twitter symphony as you move through your day, if you wonder what it’s all about, tomorrow is a great time to learn more.

Andrew Farnsworth was just 5 years old when he first started birding. As he grew up, this pastime and the science behind it became so captivating he started thinking about how to find a career that would somehow involve birds.

Today, Farnsworth, now 46, is one of the research associates at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which just completed its Global Big Day count that drew 26,000 contributors from around the world. (For a deep look Cornell’s innovation and development as the globe’s leading citizen science effort with its eBird project, see our story that ran Tuesday in the Washington Post. )

One of the intriguing backstories about eBird – a technology that’s become central to the routines of hundreds of thousands of birdwatchers – is how much of this work is in the hands of folks for whom birding was part of their upbringing.

“I was fascinated by migration at a very early age,’’ said Farnsworth, who works out of New York City and oversees the lab’s BirdCast and BirdVox projects that track the migration through a series of new tools. “I was very fortunate to be able to turn it into a career at the lab.’’

The stories of many researchers at Cornell, as well as Audubon, birding associations and conservation groups, follow similar paths.

Saturday is the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s “Global Big Day,” a highlight of the spring migration when birders around the world count as many species they can find in 24 hours.

My birding bag and I were both getting ready.

This post started out as a way to tell you how to get prepared for a day traipsing the countryside in search of wading birds, wood warblers or anything else that might happen to migrate by. But when I sat down to catalog everything I bring along in my birding bag, I came to a jarring realization.

First I need to explain that my birding bag is a small brown backpack with pink zippers that’s a hand-me-down from my daughter’s time at summer camp. It reeks of sweat and bug spray, but I’m afraid to wash it because it’s so old it could fall apart. And then I might, too.

The whole point of having a birding bag like mine is to anticipate disaster and be fully prepared to deal with it. Inside there’s a tube of sunscreen, a water bottle, gum, lip balm, tissues, hand sanitizer, lens cleaners, a protein bar and dental floss. (Dental floss makes a great temporary shoestring or emergency suture, but mine’s there in case a bit of the protein bar gets stuck in my teeth.)

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Washington Post story on eBird

IN-DEPTH STORY ON BIRDING

Here’s a package that ran in the Washington Post on how Cornell’s eBird project grew into the world’s most ambitious citizen science project. It’s an example of the in-depth coverage we do from time to time as part of our reporting on avian topics and trends.

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About us

We’re two journalists who’ve traded in our work in publishing and syndicated writing for following and photographing the birds. We live in Washington, DC, but are traveling the country every chance we get -- and are sharing the lessons birds are teaching us and the photos we take along the way.

Why Flying Lessons

This website is about what we can learn from the birds around us. Some of the lessons are obvious, such as the way birds can be a barometer of environmental changes. Others are subtle, like the way you, as an observer, have to adapt to navigate the world in which birds operate. We ourselves still have much to learn about birding, a late-in-life pursuit that has captivated us in retirement. But we decided to start writing about the lessons and teachings as we’re finding our way, in hopes that our storytelling and photography will help to celebrate a captivating element of nature.